#13 The Narváez Expedition and Cabeza de Vaca Part 2

The History of the Americans

Jack Henneman

History

4.9 • 632 Ratings

🗓️ 19 March 2021

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode continues the shocking story of the doomed Narváez expedition and its almost unbelievable struggle to survive. In this episode, the expedition begins to unravel in Florida, and cooks up a crazy scheme to send 250 men across the Gulf of Mexico on rafts. All of this ends up with the “discovery” of Texas! And, of course, a lot of dead Spanish.

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Selected references for this episode

Andrés Reséndez, A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, The Account: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s Relacion, An Annotated Translation by Martin A. Favata and Jose B. Fernandez

Alex D. Krieger, We came Naked and Barefoot: The Journey of Cabeza de Vaca Across North America

Gonzalo Fernandez Oviedo y Valdez and Harbert Davenport, “The Expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez,” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly

David Ewing Duncan, Hernando De Soto: A Savage Quest in the Americas

The route of the rafts across the Gulf (map on thehistoryoftheamericans.com):

The route of the rafts across the Gulf of Mexico (credit Andrés Reséndez)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast, Episode 13, The Nervice Expedition in Cabezza de Vaca, Part 2.
0:14.1	I'm your host, Jack Heneman, and we are recording this on March 18, 2021, in the Crescent City, New Orleans, Louisiana, where the sound of brass,
0:25.0	well-blown, is only now returning. You will recall that at the end of last week's episode,
0:32.7	Panfila de Nevisse, some of his men, and all 42 of their remaining horses, had gone ashore on the
0:39.7	west coast of Florida, somewhere near Tampa Bay, in April 1528. There they had searched through a
0:47.9	just-abandoned Indian village, and faithfully found a rattle made of gold.
0:58.8	Narvaise claimed the land for Spain, and it must be said himself.
1:04.0	As weird as these claiming exercises may seem to wee moderns,
1:06.3	it was especially weird in this case,
1:09.6	in so far as these Spanish thought they were in unexplored Mexico,
1:12.4	rather than the Gulf Coast of Florida.
1:20.2	Yes, they were still within the vast territory granted by Emperor Charles V to Nervais,
1:25.9	but had they known where they were, they also would have known that this was territory Ponce de Leon had visited in 1513 and 1521, and no doubt managed to claim for Spain in the normal course of events.
1:35.5	More hilariously, Hernando de Soto would land his expedition at roughly the same spot in 1539, and also claim it for Spain, and of course, himself.
1:46.7	So Tampa Bay is pretty seriously overclaimed.
1:51.1	Then again, there's an American flag on the moon, which I for one think is incredibly cool.
1:57.2	So maybe we modern shouldn't get too high and mighty about the staking of national claims
2:03.1	after all. Over the next couple of weeks, Narvice and his landing party explored the area. Just to the
2:12.0	north, they found Tampa Bay itself, and shortly thereafter, they had their first contact with Indians who had not run away.
2:20.2	These Indians were, per Kabeza-davaka, in possession of many crates belonging to Castilian merchants.
2:28.2	And in each one of them was the body of a dead man, and the bodies were covered with painted deer hides.
2:35.9	Here we have the first of many misunderstandings.
	...

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